We ARE All Dead

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

Virtually all of my students misunderstand and misquote Keynes to be saying that

In the long run we will all be dead

But, this misses the point. It suggests that “by the time the long run gets here we will all be dead anyway. So why worry” The natural response is that our decedents won’t be dead, humanity won’t be dead, etc. The conclusion is that Keynes was selfish and shortsighted.

Yet, what is meant is that in long run we ARE all dead. Or, as I tell my students: This story only has one ending. If you’re worried about whether things will work out in the end – don’t. They won’t work out in the end. In the end everyone is dead.

In the end, everyone we’ve ever known and cared about has died. In the end, the earth has grown cold and everything that humanity has built either withered away or froze in the blackness of space. That’s what the end is like.

So it can’t be about the end. It has to be about the experiences that people will have before the end comes. And, those experiences are currently miserable. That matters and it matters as much as anything because there is no cosmic final act in which all wrongs will be righted and all sacrifices rewarded.

So if you want to argue that current misery is warranted then the argument must be that future misery will be alleviated. In which case we need to talk about what that misery is. Is it greater or lesser than the current misery? Will it occur with probability one? Will we have additional methods for alleviating pain at that time, etc? This is the argument I have not seen elucidated by the Austerity Now crowd.

In general, however, the notion that wisdom always requires sacrificing the short term for the long term and that what matters it was happens in the “end” is naive in its understanding of our ultimate fate.

Well you’d have to show that the costs of doing nothing greatly outweigh the costs of doing something. That by suffering today we alleviate enormous suffering tomorrow. That we do so with high probability and that there will not be alternative means in the future to alleviate said suffering.

Indeed, I have argued AGAINST most attempts to stop global warming on the grounds that they fail this test.

But what I was actually getting at was just using global warming as one example of any possible prevention of future suffering or even calamity. If we used the we ARE all dead anyway argument doesn’t that preclude nearly all pain now to alleviate any future suffering that is not in the very near future?

I wouldn’t go as far as suggesting we shouldn’t have long-term projects such as stopping global warming. I don’t believe that’s what Keynes is saying. What he is saying is that we shouldn’t lose sight of the NOW for the sake of the TOMORROW. It’s much like when politicians make economic plans based on what they hope a future congress will do. No one should rely on the stability of tomorrow simply because we’ve decided to fall into the trap of “no pain” now “no gain” tomorrow.

Basically, it’s easy to be conservative in one’s actions in the near term and simply assume the few years ahead will be better. I think people focus too much on the “In the long run we are all dead” when the focus should be more on “Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.”

I have witnessed the usage of Keynes’s quote to justify short term goals over long term objectives. It is clear that Keynes has been taken out of context by many people just like Darwin has been taken out of context.

To reach some clarity of thought, we can ask a simple question: if poverty exists, should education be preferred over either clothes or housing or food? Should poor children be allowed to enter school when they can work and earn revenue for their families?

The general wisdom is seen in M.K.Gandhi’s statement: “we do not inherit the world from our ancestors but we borrow it from our children.”